St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1887-12-01
MISCELLANY.
WHETHER OR NO.
A Thanksgiving story.
Rose Terry Cooke in Harper's Bazdr.

Stlam OIeu away 10 the Darn, WHeTc III
was his duty to turn the feed cutter.
"Shall, though !" chuckled Lame
Jim.
1t was only the poor honse, beloved
reader. Did you ever go through a
country poOr-hOuse Zone unvisited
by modern philanthrOpists or select
men eager to make one more dollar out
of their luckless fellow creatures
If You never have, there is still a
page in your experience, and an inter-
esting page, unturned.
But Dalton pOOr-hOuse had none of
the horrors that are sometimes to be
found in these holes and corners of the
earth. Uncle Sim Afford and Aunt
Polly, his wife, were honest, poor,
kind hearted creatures, who took the
care of the Dalton poor, not to make
money, but merely to help themselves
to sure, if frugal, means of living,
and they treated as we'll as their mar
row means would allow the creatures
whom they had bought at the lowest
living prices.
Oh no, / am not returning to the
state of things ante beltum we have
our own sales of flesh and blood in
New England, even unto this day, in
many another town than Dalton,
where the waits and strays, the penni-
less, the helpless, the widows who
have no home, the old men crippled
with rheumatism, whose lives of hard
work on reluctant soil have only re-
warded them with stiff joints and
spasms of muscular anguish, the or
phans to whom strength of mind or
health of body is denied-where all
these, l say, ARE put up at auction,
and knocked down to the lowest bid
der, not the highest. Yes; that slight
help to self-respect that caused glim-
mer of light sometimes on even a
slaves face, the fact that he was worth
more to buy than others of his gang,
was denied to these paupers; the low
est bid relegated them to the bidder
who would keep them on the least
food, the minimum heat and clothing.
Lucky were the Dalton paupers who
fell into Uncle Sims hands. The able
bodied had to work it is true even
the lame and the lazy had their own
allotted tasks; but they were kept
warm, and if their food was plain,
there was enough of it, tor Aunt Polly
was woman of resources, and knew
how to make the most of her "privi
leges," as she called them. There was
rich land on the Afford farm, and the
additional, if intermittent, help of the
male paupers helped Uncle Sim to lay
up good store of potatoes, and deep
bins of winter apples i'll the cellar un :
der the barn there were heaps Of
Hubbard squashes on the shelves in
the house cellar, and hundreds of firm
cabbages i'll the vegetable pit next the
COW barn, where also carrots, turnips,
and winter beets promised Chilled din
ner" as often as even the Yankee pal
ate could desire. Then, on the upland
fields, the sheaves of rye stood heavy
and thick in autumn, and in the barns
there was housed corn enough to be a
profitable investment; for the "POor
Farm" partly supplied Dalton village
with milk, and Lame Jim was able at
least to take care of the cows, to pre-
pare vegetables for dinner, and was
''real handy" as Aunt Polly smilingly
testified, at washing dishes and hang
ing out clothes. Poor Jim was indeed
waif; his mother had come one win
ter night, more than twenty years ago
to the poor-house door, starved, and
half frozen, and had flung herself down
on its steps to die, for she could not go
yard further or even call for help. 1t
was Jim's piteOus wall that at last
reused the sleepers inside. He was
clasped so closely to his mothers bO-
som, tied SO tightly in his. mothers
shawl, that the death frost had not
reached him; but he was hungry and
his voice was uplifted to proclaim the
fact. When he was taken from the
poor wanderers arms she raised her
head feebly, sent one long piteOus look
after him, the last look of heart
broken mother, and fell back dead.
Nobody ever knew where she came
from or who she was. At three years
old IL child knows and remembers al
most nothing. This baby could afford
them no clew, so she was buried i'm the
swampy corner of Dalton graveyard,
reserved for those who had no money
to buy a grave on its sunny knobs,
among its gray or white monuments;
and as she had no name, or age, or
date whatever, there was no stone set
above her; she returned to dust as un
known as the bird that drops in the
forest, the squirrel that flies to some
desOate hole and gives up its name
less, dateless life to the giver. Nor
jim was born deniZen of the poor
house, and grew up there, having
been duly baptised us "James Smith,
for no particular reason except that he
must have a name of some kind he
was an odd child, and at a very early
age developed hip disease-wretched
heritage of scrOfula and pOverty-sO
that he could not be bound out to any
f.a,.. 70 Il
Moreover, as he grew older, he did not
develop well mentally. He was by no
means an idiot he had flashes of keen
wit, acute perception, rather unusual
practical sense, but they seemed to be
only flashes. A great part of the time
he was moody or silly, either speech
less or full of laughter without a cause,
and lifting snaps of idle song, some
times oddly appropriate. In his wan
behring's about the farm he always dis
covered where the sassafras saplings
grew, what trees bore the biggest
the locality of sweet flag
the best place to gather
the wild berries, where to tind sweet
cicely roots, and the mountain herbs
good for spring beer, which Aunt Pol
ly brewed better than any maid or
matrOn in Dalton. This knowledge
gained him many a friend among the
boys of the village, and when he at
last learned to read, his literary pos
sessions, consisting of an abbreviated
Robinson CrusOe, battered Mother
Goose, we'll worn Keepers Travels |
and one volume of Evenings at Home,
were all bought of some boy or other
who liked chestnuts or hag-rOOt or
"plums" better than a
old book.
1t is true that as soon as he could |
master words of two syllables, an ac-
owed to Aunt Polly's |